Remaining Unique

This is a fairly general question, but how do you remain unique with your site? Most of us have competitors so we certainly need to be different in certain aspects. How do you do it?

 

I think if you want to make a forum and have an obvious larger competitor, one place to start is your layout (both the forum skin and category/forum structure). A lot of very large forums, for some reason, are not that great aside from how active they are (this is not always true, of course). So if you try to do right where they might not be, you already have something your competition doesn't. It can be very, very hard though. Especially when your best source of members are the ones on the very boards you are competing with.

 

Our forum has a lot of large competitors, so we look to see what they don't have and immediately implement it. Also, we try and keep our template unique from the other cliche designs.

 

Have a custom skin, don't copy their categories/ideas and come up with ideas or approaches they did not think about and that should help .

 

Yeah, a nice custom-made skin is always a plus for new visitors.

 

I keep everything original.

Content, theme (skin), custom modifications, etc.

I look out for communities like me, and differentiate mine from their's, etc.

 

An custom theme and offer features that your competition doesn't have. Also try to have an different forum structure but sometimes that might be hard depending on the niche.

 

This is why using pre-made "free" skins is not the best idea - particularly when it comes to being unique or different from the rest. A custom designed skin of some sort is most definitely a most (in my opinion).

 

True that, but when you start a new forum there might not be enough money in your pocket to buy an custom skin.

But in vBulletin 4 I think alot of people will be able to make there own custom skin thereself. Including me

 

I'm looking forward to the new skinning system - it will be great for people who don't really know how to design, such as myself.

 

I agree - I'm excited to try out the new style system with vB 4 because it might give me a chance to actually be able to create something! Chris, I suck at graphics. :p

 

I suck at grapichs to but I am very good with CSS styles so i will create unique styles for my vbulletin forums when vb4 gets out. Atleast I hope so

 

You're not alone. Not at all.

 

I also always want a website for my forum but never want to worry about the website part; coding, designing, updating, etc. I think the CMS will be great for this.

 

I try and remain unique by having a strong sense of community that's what I think resonates with current members the most.

Aside from that once you're up and running a bit and have a little incoming coming in off the site a completely customized style is a must. I got mine about 2 years ago, so it's almost time for a new one, now only if I could afford it.

Outside of that a vBulletin forum looks and acts like a vBulletin forum. In one sense it's good because it's familiar to people but in another sense it makes it harder to create a unique experience as you want that familiarity for the less computer savvy folks.

My closest competitor has ripped off every original idea I've implemented from the welcome forum, to the post thanks hack, to running a vanilla vB install for years and just after I opened my site with a nice (free at the time) template he starts installing mods and adds a custom template; which he swears he had developed but I found it for sale @ $25 :lol: . It cheeses me off but I guess there isn't much you can do about it.